Co-managed IT is a partnership model designed for businesses that already have internal IT staff. Rather than replacing your team, we work alongside them – taking on the layers of work that fall outside their bandwidth or expertise while they stay focused on the day-to-day needs of your staff. Fully outsourced managed IT is designed for businesses with no internal IT capability at all. Co-managed is specifically for organizations that want to keep their internal team in place and make them more effective.

No – and this is worth saying plainly. Your internal IT person or team remains in control of the relationship. We are there to augment their capabilities, not replace them. We take on the work they do not want to deal with – monitoring, compliance, automation, complex projects – and we help free them up to take the vacations they have earned. Businesses that engage co-managed IT typically find their internal staff become more effective and less burned out, not less relevant.

Farmhouse Networking typically owns the monitoring, compliance, and automation layers. Your internal IT team handles day-to-day staff requests and forwards service requests or projects to us beyond what we identify through monitoring and automation. The division of responsibility is formally documented as part of onboarding and is flexible based on the specific needs of your company. If your team’s needs shift over time, the documented split can be adjusted.

That depends on how you want to structure the relationship. We can operate as a fully private-labeled support desk – answering phones as your IT department, responding to tickets in your ticketing system, and presenting as your internal team to end users. If you prefer a more visible partnership arrangement, we can support your team in a behind-the-scenes capacity. We work with you to determine the right model for your organization and your staff.

Onboarding follows the same structured process as our full managed IT service. We conduct a discovery and documentation review of your existing environment, establish the formal division of responsibilities with your internal team, deploy our monitoring and management tools where applicable, and work through an introductory period to establish working rhythms with your IT staff. The goal is a smooth handoff with no disruption to your users.

Both are possible. We have a proven software stack – including RMM, security, and compliance tools – that we recommend based on experience with SMB environments. If your team already has tooling in place, we can work within that environment. If you choose to adopt our stack, your internal IT team gets full access to their systems within our tools, giving them visibility into everything we are managing on their behalf.

The co-managed tier is the baseline engagement and covers monitoring, automation, asset inventory, documentation, and remote help desk support. From there, services from our security and compliance stacks can be added based on your needs. This includes cybersecurity services such as penetration testing, next-generation antivirus and EDR, advanced email threat protection, web content filtering, and mobile device management. Security Operations Center as a Service and Managed Detection and Response are available as add-ons. Compliance management for HIPAA, PCI, NIST, and CMMC is also available as an additional service layer.

Fixed-price projects means we scope the work, agree on a price, and deliver within that commitment – no surprise invoices, no scope creep charges billed at hourly rates. Common examples include server virtualization, infrastructure wiring, and cloud migration. For your internal IT team, this means they can bring us complex projects without worrying that the final bill will bear no resemblance to the estimate. We absorb the risk of project complexity rather than passing it to you.

No. We work with organizations of all sizes. A single overwhelmed IT generalist at a small company and a multi-person IT department at a larger organization both have legitimate co-managed needs – the engagement just looks different. We adapt our offering to the size and structure of your team. If you have one internal IT person who is drowning in tickets, we can structure an engagement that gives them the breathing room they need. If you have a larger team with specific capability gaps, we fill those gaps precisely.

This is one of the less obvious but genuinely important benefits of co-managed IT. If your internal IT person leaves, you are not left with zero coverage. Because Farmhouse Networking already has documentation of your environment, established access, and ongoing monitoring in place, the transition period is far less disruptive than it would be without a co-managed partner. We can increase our involvement while you recruit a replacement and help onboard the new hire once they are in place.

Yes. The co-managed model is intentionally flexible. As your organization grows, takes on new compliance obligations, or faces a surge in project work, we can expand the scope of our involvement. If your internal team grows and takes back more responsibility, we can reduce our footprint accordingly. The formal documented division of responsibilities is a living document, not a fixed contract that locks you into a specific configuration.

Cybersecurity services are available as add-ons to the co-managed tier. Depending on your needs, this can include penetration testing, managed network equipment, web content filtering, network traffic monitoring, advanced email threat protection, next-generation antivirus and EDR, SOCaaS, and MDR. Employee security awareness training and compliance management for HIPAA, PCI, NIST, and CMMC are also available. We work with your internal team to identify the gaps in your current security posture and layer in the services that address them.

The co-managed tier is the baseline service level and is priced accordingly – below the cost of full managed IT because your internal team handles a portion of the workload. Additional services from our security and compliance stacks are priced as add-ons. The result is a modular structure where you pay for what you actually need rather than a bundled package that includes services your team does not require. We provide a clear quote as part of the evaluation process.

Co-managed IT is designed for any business that has internal IT staff who are stretched beyond their capacity or expertise. This includes small companies with a single IT generalist, mid-sized businesses with a dedicated IT department, and larger organizations with specialized teams that have gaps in specific areas such as cybersecurity or compliance. The common thread is not company size – it is the presence of internal IT capability that needs to be extended rather than replaced.

Fill out the quote request form on this page. We will review your current environment and internal IT setup, discuss where the gaps and pressure points are, and put together a co-managed proposal that fits your team’s specific situation. There is no cost to the evaluation and no obligation to proceed.